Poverty Affects Children

How Poverty Affects Education
Poverty affects children’s education. To what extent this statement is true? As Carlos
Lee (2013) points out in his doctoral dissertation, evaluating the Effectiveness of
Supplemental Educational Services in Large Texas School Districts, “Poverty, regardless of
level, is robustly linked to reduced academic achievement.” This reflects that whoever faces
poverty especially at the young age, would be having difficulties in gaining knowledge. So,
how it impacts the children learning? There must be lots of consequences of born in a lower
class family either it is positive or negative. As today’s education sometimes demands for
large amount of money to be invested, it seems the poor family cannot efforts to spend much
for its children’s education. At the end, the children will
This essay will focus on the causes and effects of poverty towards children’s
education. The ideas will consist of three aspects which are health, cognitive development
and social emotional of the children.
First and foremost, children who live in a poor family can lead to a poor health. At the
young age, the children require a lot of nutrition in order to grow well. However, due to the
inability of the poor parents to provide those essential needs such as milk, fruits, fresh meats
and so on, it will affect the physical and cognitive development of the children. It cannot be
denied that fresh foods are more expensive than fast food which is much, much economical
for the lower class family. Moreover, William & Kathleen (2016) claimed that poor nutrition
given by less fortune family to their children can affect the rate of childhood disease. This
statement has been supported by Jeanne & Greg (1997) as “when children do not eat
regular, well-balanced meals, their bodies are more susceptible to a variety of illnesses, like
untreated ear infections and asthma.” So, this clearly shows that poverty leads to poor
health.
Furthermore, when the children have an inferior health, it will affect their attendance
to the school. As the effect of being provided by unhealthy food, the children’s bodies would
be easily tired and simply infected by diseases such as fever, cough, asthma and many
more. This will encourage them to skip the classes and indirectly undermines their learning
at school. In fact, when they were absent, no one will take the responsibility to cover the
lessons that have been skipped as their parents also cannot effort to take them for extra
tuition classes. At the end, the children would not be able to answer the questions in the
exams and even worse they also might be not around during the examination days as they
are sick. Therefore, it is no doubt anymore that poverty can affect children’s health which
leads to ruin their education.
Figure 1: The cycle of hunger. Adapted from What you need to know about global hunger by
Mercu Cops (2015).
Based on the above figure, it reflects that children who come from low-income family
will face this cycle of hunger due to incapability of the family to provide healthy food for their
children. Circuitously, this figure supports the previous arguments that poverty can affect
children’s health due to lack of nutritious in the food provided by their poor family. It is not
only for a short-term effect yet leads to long-standing as it influences their future careers and
incomes.
Cognitive development includes how information is acquired, processed and

organized by the children. It is also on how they becoming more efficient and effective in
their understanding of the world in their mental processes. At their young ages, these
progresses require a convenience environment so that the development can occur smoothly.
Richard (2013) discovered that, children who live in poverty often come to school behind
their more affluent peers in terms of literacy and language development. This statement is
supported by an article on In Educating the Other America, whereby Susan Neuman (2008)
which stated more than 50 years of research indicate that "children who are poor hear a
smaller number of words with more limited syntactic complexity and fewer conversation-
eliciting questions, making it difficult for them to quickly acquire new words and to
discriminate among words" (p. 5). It strongly reflects that due to a poor condition, the
children do not participate in lively conversations like their middle-class friends (LSU Online,
2016). This may be because they refuse to participate in conversations as they do not
understand and afraid to ask for clarification due to their poor background.
Resulting from that, it would affect the whole learning process that the children are
required in the school. Just imagines if their cognitive performances in term of literacy and
language have not developed very well, how they would survive in acquiring the knowledge
as all subjects require these basic skills in order to gain more information. In addition,
vocabulary plays a major part in cognitive development and children’s success in their
classroom, therefore the lack of exposure to a rich and interesting vocabulary can leave
them behind in academic conversations. Above all, it seems poverty can cause a negative
impact to the children’s cognitive development which leads to terrible performances in their
education.
Another key thing to remember is poverty also leads to children’s emotional

problems. Research by Jeanne & Greg (1997) suggests that poor children suffer from
emotional and behavioral problems more frequently than do non-poor children. William &
Kathleen (January, 2016.) expressed a similar view. Students who live in poverty-stricken
families encounter many situations that can seriously affect them socially and emotionally.
Low-income family cannot effort to provide lots of needs of their children such as examples
given by (LSU Online Team, 2016) such as limited access to high-quality day care, limited
access to before- or after-school care, and limited physical space in their homes to create
private or quiet environments conducive to study. These deficiencies affect children’s
emotion in the sense of their behavior. An illustration given by Seth (June, 2016) in the
article, when the young people went through lots of hardship due to low-income family, they
may act out in different ways. Some students are more aggressive and talk back to teachers
using inappropriate language. This reflects that the children are having emotional problems.
As an effect, the emotional problems face by the children would influence their
learning process. They might be so stress living the way they live as everything is not
encouraging them to excel in their studies. According to LSU Online (2016), it has supported
this idea when it claimed that “Students who believe that their station in life will never change
may go to little or no effort to succeed.” In other word, being needy makes children easily
give up in their education development.
To cut a long story short, all these arguments show that poverty is a serious crisis
that impacted the children’s education either from inward or outward. Actions should be
taken to overcome these causes that can affect the children’s development or else it will not
only have an effect on their education but the most importantly their precious future. Yet it
could not be denied that it is not their desire for being poor but maybe the way they live in
those days leads them to poverty. Therefore, solutions need to be discovered so that these
problems would not create greater impact to the children’s education.
References
Carlos Lee (2013). Evaluating the Effectiveness of Supplemental Educational Services in

Large Texas School Districts. Introduction. 97(01), 75.
William P. & Kathleen B., (January, 2016.) How Does Poverty Influence Learning? Retrieved
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/how-does-poverty-influence-learning-william-parrett-
kathleen-budge
Seth B. A. (June 2016). What you need to know about global hunger. Retrieved
http://messianicmessiah.blogspot.my/2016/06/what-you-need-to-know-about-
global.html
Jeanne B. G. & Greg J. D., (1997). The Effects of Poverty on Children. The future of
children, children and poverty 7(2), 5.
Richard J. Coley (2013). Poverty and Education: finding the way forward. Rosedale Road
Princeton: ETS Center.
LSU Online Team, (2016). How Does Poverty Affect Education? Retrieved
http://lsuonline.lsu.edu/articles/education/how-does-poverty-affect-education.aspx

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How Poverty Affects Education

Cognitive development includes how information is acquired, processed and

Another key thing to remember is poverty also leads to children’s emotional

Carlos Lee (2013). Evaluating the Effectiveness of Supplemental Educational Services in

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